Tag: Jail

I just watched a show on the popular TV channel Nation Geographic, which inspired me to do this article. The show was about a real life story of four American guys, making the worst decision of their lives, when they get involved in drug trafficking. The four guys are stopped in the airport in Brazil and are sent to prison. The sentence was originally 25 years, but due to a bribe of the judge the four guys’ only end up serving 4½ year in prison. One quote said by one of the boys serving was: “freedom is priceless”.

With that sentence: “freedom is priceless” there is no doubt that he is absolutely right, however the most of us actually don’t care or at least never give it a thought, probably because we take our freedom for granted. It is really hard to explain the feeling I was left with when watching the show, but it made me wonder if we as human beings of the free world, are appreciating the freedom our ant sisters have been fighting for. There is an old saying sounding something like: “You only know what you got, till it is gone” and I guess that was what those four guys realized in the second they were put behind bars.

I would like to turn this true real life story in another direction, to a topic that has had my attention for a while: “Time”! In the article about Georg Soerensen I was as well putting emphasis on the subject time, because time is a limited resource and we do only have a certain amount of hours on this planet. The question is if we get the best out of it?

Looking at this problem through the eyes of an entrepreneur, the greatest wish would be to have an extra hour in a day and since this probably is too great a challenge for even the best entrepreneur, the solution might be found elsewhere. An interesting approach would be to look at reducing the time spend on sleeping. I am quite sure that if anybody could come up with an innovation that could reduce the need for sleep, he or she could make a fortune just on the patent alone. However there might be another approach to the problem.

Because what is it worth to get an extra hour awake every day, if it is not an affective hour? I know from myself that I spend too much time everyday doing stuff that does not in any direct way create any kind of value for me. I don’t learn anything from it, I do not extend my network, I do not make money, and in general I spend too many hours wasting my precious time. It takes self-acknowledgement to reach this conclusion, but only by being aware of it, I can work on it and become better.

Here I would like to draw the connection to the four guys from the TV show. They learned it the hard way, how precious life is and especially how much freedom and the opportunity to do whatever you want to should be appreciated. You never know what tomorrow will bring and you never know which day is your last.

The conclusion must be that time shall and must be lived RIGHT NOW, because you never know if tomorrow will be your last. So do not waste your time doing things that does not create value in your life and remember to enjoy every single minute of your freedom. Do never take anything for granted.